THE USES OF COMPETITION

by
Daniel DeLeon

The Daily People
Nov. 17, 1906

S ocialism is said to be “against competition".
The statement is defective; so defective that it suggests an erroneous
idea.

Socialism can with no greater justice be said to be against competition
than doctors can be said to be against navel strings. The navel string
has its mission; so long as its mission is unfinished, it is necessary;
the doctor cuts it only when its mission is at end. It is so with
competition.

The only difference is that competition has two distinct, but
successive, phases.

The first phase of competition sets in with the start of capitalism.
It is an inevitable accompaniment of individual production. At first,
its wastefulness is amply compensated by the good it works—the steady
improvement of the means of production. In the measure, however, that
its wastefulness increases, competition cures itself. Its wastefulness
points the way to concentration. Individual capitalist concerns, in the
same industry, draw closer and closer together. “Agreements”, combines
and trusts spring up.

This is the first stage of competition.

The socialist cannot properly be said to be against this stage of
competition. He is not against it, because the socialist does not
spend his powder upon dead ducks. This first stage of competition is,
today, a dead duck.

The competition that still exists is a negligible quantity. The staples
of production are not today produced competitively. The recent debates
in Congress, seconded by the investigations of the Interstate Commerce
Commission, amply reveal the fact. The large number of “firms” in
industry, as in transportation, is but a blind. The swindle has been
fully exposed. In transportation, as in production, the large number
of “firms” in any one line is meant only to conceal the fact of their
being merged, or trustified.

The first stage being past, competition enters upon the second.

At this second stage, competition is carried on no longer by concerns
in the same industry; it is carried on by concerns in different lines
of industry. The war character of competition becomes manifest at this
stage; on the other hand, the war makes manifest what was not manifest
before—the intimate way in which one industry dovetails into the
other. Though different, the now-concentrated industries mutually need
one another, mutually lean upon one another. Each seeks to lean heavy
upon the other, while itself seeks to bear the least burden.

Arrived at this stage, the character of competition is wholly changed.
Before, it promoted production; now, all that it does—and no slight
benefit that is—is to expose the earthen feet of the presumptive and
alleged deity, the capitalist class. At this stage, competition
resolves itself into a wholesale mutual exposure and ventilation of the
truth concerning the “virtues” of the owners of the means of
production. The astounding revelations, recently made in the
capitalist camp, have their explanation only in the fact of the present
and modified form of competition—competition at its last throes,
along with the capitalist system. Why should the socialist object to
that?

Competition, whether at its first stage or last, has had and is having
its uses. It first warmed into being the giant concerns; it now
exposes their owners. It first raised the pillars for the socialist
republic; it now is tearing off the rags that disfigure and cover them
- their private ownership. For both processes, socialism has naught
but applause.